Andrew Rayel Exclusive Interview + Cielo Show Review

The Mozart of Moldova, the prince of trance, whatever you wish to call Andrei Rata, known professionally as, Andrew Rayel, it is abundantly clear the talent that is possessed by the 21 year old phenom. He has become the hottest up and coming talent in trance right now, with his tunes consistently being supported by your usual suspects of top DJs, culminating in a spectacular collab “Eiforya” alongside the trance Jesus himself, Armin van Buuren.

We were lucky enough to catch Andrew Rayel before his debut set here in NYC last Thursday and chat about being a college student, the upcoming album and much more. His set was a thing of beauty. 3 hours of nonstop action from start to finish, Rayel had a packed house all the way until the end of his set a little before 4am. His set included the fast paced styled mixing and loads of exclusive mashups that he is always making fresh, including one between “Bigfoot” and “Ping Pong” that really set the tone early on. He has become known for his gigantic melodies in the trance realm and has translated that to unofficial remixes for big time prog tracks like “In My Mind”, “Reload” and a new one “Under Control”.

His artist album that you can see the teaser art below is set to hit stores near you at the very of May. Get ready because it is going to be something very special and not your standard club fanfare you see elsewhere. This will be different. Also can anyone figure out the last word? I have “Find Your H_ _ _ O _ _” and can’t figure out the last word.

FNT: How important was your classical training to what you do now?

Andrew Rayel: It was absolutely really, really important because I know a lot of DJs don’t have any musical or classical training and it doesn’t stop them, but for me it is really because whenever I have a melody in my head I can find it on the keyboard on the really, really easily. I use a lot of classical elements in my tracks, a lot of piano, so it makes my job really easy.

FNT: Continuing with your music, you made a song [The Sprit Of Yiga] for the Drapchi Soundtrack…

Andrew Rayel: Yeah I was surprised that one of the directors of an Indian movie heard one of my tracks on youtube, like a really, really old track, like when I was just 16 or 17 and I uploaded just a melody on Youtube. Luckily I left an email there. He did not know about Andrew Rayel or anything because that was another name and he just wrote an email “Hey I am the director of that movie” and he sent me the script and it said he loved my music and can you do a soundtrack for me. And I was like yeah sure why not that was a big thing. I did a short soundtrack — its really sad because its about a prison in India. So I think its going to be released around this time, I didn’t get much info about it because of all of the touring, but it was really fun and a new experience.

FNT: Do you want to do more?

Andrew Rayel: I would love to do more, but not now because I am young, so I can do dance music and tour all of the world and play festivals and clubs. But my general plan is when I am old I will be bored of planes and traveling all over the world, so I will just sit in the studio and write soundtracks.

FNT: Like what BT does?

Andrew Rayel: Yea like what BT does, or what other normal sound producers like Hans Zimmer and Klaus Badelt they just produce music for the movies.

FNT: What would Andrew Rayel of 2014 go back and advise Randry to do differently or better?

Andrew Rayel: You known about Randy? That was a long time ago and actually someone from the radio told me that Randry was a very common name for DJs. Its not Randry, basically they use Randry but most of the time they spell it wrong it, so they used to call me Randy and their were a 100 Randys on the radio. One of my friends told that I had to change my name because they were going to mix me up with the other people so that is when I decided to change it to Andrew Rayel. I releases a few tracks with that alias on a really small label [Only One Records] in Spain or I don’t even remember.

FNT: Are you still in school?

Andrew Rayel: Kinda, almost not. I am still at university, but I have my last two exams in May then I graduate university and I will be free to do my own thing.

FNT: Are you going to class this spring?

Andrew Rayel: Yeah of course. Of course not to all of them. Last month I had such a busy schedule so I didn’t have a chance to go that much but I have my books with me and I learn on the road ::points to bulging suitcase::, I use my computer so teacher can share with on emails. I just can’t wait to finish those two exams and then do my own thing 100%, because I have to focus on this and on school and it is way too much.

FNT: Are your teachers still understanding of you?

Andrew Rayel: Yeah they are. When I started they weren’t really, they said “DJ what is that, what do you do”. But after that I had been on the national news, like when I was 77 in DJ Mag and then again when I was 29 this year they saw that this kid is really growing up. I was always talking about my country and USA people don’t always so I always tell all the people, the promotors where I am from, so I am doing a good thing for my country, so they should understand.

FNT: Do you plan on using your Economics degree?

Andrew Rayel: Maybe, you never know. Music business is really tricky, so you never know what happens tomorrow. Trance is changing so fast, so tomorrow there is going to be a new trance, which I am not going to love. It’s could be a drum n bass mixed with rock and I don’t really like that. So I would have to step out and do something normal, like economics or accounting for me.

FNT: Moving ahead, what can we expect from your album?

Andrew Rayel: It is an album with a complete history behind it, so every song has a short history. It has a beautiful intro, a beautiful outro, a lot of melody, a lot of classical elements like what people used to hear from me. I know a lot of people think I am going away to electo house, which is not true and they will see that from my album. Of course there is always room for some experimentation, so I tried to do an album where each song would be completely different.

There are so many great things in that album, I can’t wait to share it with the people.

FNT: You have a bunch of unofficial remixes for songs like “In My Mind” and “Reload”. How do you go about choosing those songs?

Andrew Rayel: I came up with this idea, which is also related to is it trance, is it house, what is it.

FNT: It doesn’t really matter….

Andrew Rayel: Yeah, it doesn’t really matter, as long as there is a good melody and a good track. Of course for me I know what trance is and what house is of course “In My Mind” and “Reload” are house tracks. I have seen a lot of people getting trance melodies and making trance tracks from them, getting a break from a really good trance track and putting a drop there. I said, why shouldn’t I take a house track and make it a more trancey track. So that is when I started to do rebuilds, reworks of some famous house tracks and do them more trancey like “In My Mind” or “Reload” or others, I did a lot of them.

FNT: Do you ever want to release them or just keep them for your live sets?

Andrew Rayel: I don’t have the power to release them. The rights are owned by the producer and label, so I have no right to release them. The only thing I can do is maybe give them out for free in the future as bootlegs or something like that, but so far they working really well for me and I just keep them exclusively for myself and a few others.

FNT: What is something people would not expect about you?

Andrew Rayel: I guess a lot of people see me on stage jumping and acting crazy, but in normal life I am really kind of shy, quiet guy, so when I am on stage I flip into Andrew Rayel and start going crazy.